Philip Dick

They accepted anything that came along. There was no longer any normal, any natural course of things, moral or physical, for them to expect. Custom, habit, all the determining forces of learning were gone; only brute experience remained.

He chuckled, but it had an abstract quality; he always smiled and he always chuckled, his voice always boomed, but inside he did not notice anyone, did not care; it was his body which smiled, nodded and shook hands. Nothing touched his mind, which remained remote; aloof, but amiable

Defend your privacy, the ads yammered on the hour, from all media. Is a stranger tuning in on you? Are you really alone? That for the telepaths… and then the queasy worry about precogs.

“Put her in solitary right now,” Runciter broke in. “Better she be isolated than not exist at all.”
“She exists,” von Vogelsang corrected. “She merely can’t contact you. There’s a difference.”
Runciter said, “A metaphysical difference which means nothing to me.”

Friends, this is clean-up time and we’re discounting all our silent, electric Ubiks by this much money. Yes, we’re throwing away the blue-book. And remember: every Ubik on our lot has been used only as directed.

At three-thirty A.M. on the night of June 5, 1992, the top telepath in the Sol System fell off the map in the offices of Runciter Associates in New York City. That started vid-phones ringing. The Runciter organization had lost track of too many of Hollis’ psis during the last two months; this added disappearance wouldn’t do.

The technician in charge of the night shift at the map room coughed nervously as the massive, sloppy head of Glen Runciter swam up to fill the vidscreen.

“S. Dole Melipone,” the technician said.

“What? Melipone’s gone? You kid me.”

Edie Dorn and two other inertials followed him to a motel named the Bonds of Erotic Polymorphic Experience, a sixty-unit sub-surface structure catering to businessmen and their hookers who don’t want to be entertained

had lit a cigarette